


The Last Nazi

by Sharksdontsleep



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, M/M, Nazis, Road Trip, they fight crime, warnings for central michigan
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-11-12
Updated: 2011-11-26
Packaged: 2017-10-26 00:08:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/276371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sharksdontsleep/pseuds/Sharksdontsleep
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Someone's killing ex-Nazi scientists. Steve and Tony investigate. On the way, there is mystery, angst, and way more discussion of Central Michigan than intended.</p><p>Please note: This work is on hiatus until after Yuletide 2011!</p><p>ETA: I don't know if this will be finished in its current incarnation. Apologies if you were tracking it. I may pull and drastically rewrite.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Warning for discussions of murder and Nazis. Violence in later chapters.

It begins with Tony hiding the morning paper from him.

Tony’s halfway through his personal pot of coffee - because there’s Tony’s coffee and the rest of the team’s coffee, and it really says something about a person when they need more caffeine than Thor plus the _Hulk_ \- when Steve walks in.

“Eggs on the stove,” Tony mumbles, paging through something on his tablet. “Hank made ‘em.”

Steve piles a plate high with eggs; Hank makes great eggs, has some secret method of cooking that he won’t share with anyone else in the house, though Steve suspects it’s a matter of not getting impatient and smashing things, like Bruce does, or absentmindedly leaving them to burn, like Tony does.

“Paper?” Steve asks.

Tony shrugs, a bit too purposefully for the amount of awake he is.

“OK …” Steve says, even though it’s their morning ritual for him to read the paper and Tony to tap tap tap at whatever work he has, and digs into his eggs.

It’s a Saturday, and nothing’s on fire or under alien attack, apparently, and when Tony suggests continuing Steve’s movie education, Steve goes into the living room, expecting Tony to follow, when he hears the tell-tale rustle of newsprint, and the whir of the robot garbage compactor that Steve always suspected of being sentient.

“Tony,” Steve says, leaning against the doorway.

Tony Stark’s innocent face looks a lot like his guilty face.

“What was it?”

“Nothing?” Tony says, but Steve can see his resolve cracking. It doesn’t matter, or so Steve thinks, because Fury buzzes over their comms.

“Screen on,” he says, and then is out.

The TV blinks in the living room on a second later, and there’s Fury, face large and stern and glaring at them.

“So you’ve heard by now, and I just wanted to say that under no circumstances will you be investigating this incident on your own and without SHIELD supervision.”

It’s then that Steve realizes Tony is drawing his finger across his neck and shaking his head.

“Icks-nay on the azi-hunting-nay,” he says.

“Wait, what?” Steve says.

Tony buries his face in his hands.

Fury pauses, and rolls his eye, and brings up a news clip of a petite blond reporter with the unlikely name of Diamondnia Singh, reporting from what looks to be a county morgue.

“Two elderly German men have been murdered, one in a small town in Michigan, the other in a mountain cabin in North Carolina. Both were researchers for the German government before emigrating in the late 40s,” she says. Steve can hear the skepticism around the word ‘researchers’ and he can’t say he blames her.

“Both died in a similar manner. Medical reports indicate that their bodies are completely devoid of iron.”

“Magneto,” Fury says.

Tony swears.

 

Running an international conglomerate apparently doesn’t keep Tony from going on a road trip - ‘mission,’ Steve corrects - with Steve. Fury wants them to keep a low profile, which for Steve means civilian dress and slouching, and for Tony means simply not shedding money in his wake. And shaving his goatee, which he does, grudgingly.

“Won’t the, you know” Steve gestures to the briefcase containing bits of the Iron Man suit, “be a problem with Magneto.”

“It’s a non-ferrous alloy,” Tony sighs. “Really, there’s someone on this planet with magnet powers and you think I wouldn’t design _around_ that issue?”

Steve holds up his hands in his own defense.

 

They board Tony’s jet just as the sun is rising. Steve likes this time of the morning. New York is waking up - not that it ever slept - and everything sort of smells like warm rain and clean earth.

Tony also hasn’t slept, and pads from the limo to the plane in his equivalent of civilian clothes - a T-shirt that costs more than everything Steve has on, jeans that are only marginally smudged with grease, and some fancy European sneaker things that look like really expensive versions of Chuck Taylors. He looks smaller, somehow, without his beard and entourage and suits sharp enough to cut.

Tony’s private plane can only get them so far, especially in Michigan where the airstrip nearest to the town they’re going is miles and miles away. They rent a car, a Ford, which Steve thinks is only fitting for visiting Michigan and Tony looks at in disdain. He makes Steve pull over into a discount mall parking lot, and gets three large coffees and food so greasy it drips through the bag. He offers Steve something that looks like a sandwich with pancakes as bread.

“When in Rome,” Tony says, shrugging, and eats, wipes at his face with cheap paper napkins that snag a bit on his morning stubble.

The engine cools enough to let Tony tinker with it, they’re on the road soon enough again, car purring.

Michigan is flat, even by Manhattan standards. The highways are lined with scrubby trees, with billboards advertising strip clubs and marriage counseling, with more fast-food joints than Steve can even imagine.

They stay at the only motel in Charlotte, Michigan, which Steve comes to find is pronounced “Shar-lot,” and not like the woman’s name.

Tony had chattered on the drive in, something about engineering or transistors, a hum of information that Steve only had to nod in agreement with every so often. He faceplants onto the cheap motel comforter when they get in, though, and Steve spends a good amount of the morning paging through report files to the sound of Tony snoring.

Name: Martin Knopf  
Bio: Born in Cologne, September 22, 1921  
Education: Degrees in biomedical engineering  
Employment:  
University of Illinois at Chicago - adjunct professor.  
Los Alamos - 30 years as contractor for the Department of Defense.  
Third Reich as a ‘research scientist.’  
Family: Widower, no children.

And there it is, in boring 12-point font, a history of 20th century compromise, American German scientists versus the Russians’.

Steve goes into the small motel bathroom, splashes water on his face, and looks at himself in the mirror. The bathroom’s lined in gaudy paper, has a badly done Van Gough print over the toilet, has the little bottles of shampoo, the paper-wrapped soap.

Tony finds him sitting on the closed toilet, looking glum.

“Time to hit the morgue,” Tony says, cheerfully. His face has pillow dents and his voice is rough from sleep.

Steve smiles as Tony stretches, catlike, popping vertebrae in his back.

“Took coming to the middle of nowhere for you to take a nap,” he says.

“Nothing else to do here, I promise,” Tony says. “C’mon, the dead won’t like it if we’re late.”

 

Charlotte is the county seat, home to the courthouse, and a morgue smaller than Stark Tower’s walk-in refrigerator.

Their cover is as FBI agents, and Steve doesn’t believe that’ll work, until it does. Tony’s wearing a bad suit, which makes him look like he’s coming out in hives, and does his best stone-faced lawman impression, which Steve realizes halfway through their meeting is a _Coulson_ impression, at which point he has to excuse himself to the washroom to keep from laughing out loud.

The medical examiner is an unimpressed-looking woman in her forties named Dr. Adams, with a halo of red hair and stout legs. Tony tries to ooze charm at her for exactly 5 seconds, then reverts to his earlier Coulson-style iciness upon receiving a slightly raised eyebrow. Steve likes her immediately. She simply shrugs when they flash their badges, and gestures for them to accompany her to see the body.

“Like I told the folks from the news,” she says, “he doesn’t just have low iron - he has _no_ iron.”

“And that’s … unusual?” Steve asks.

“That’s impossible,” Dr. Adams says. “The body stores iron in its blood cells of course - red and to a lesser extent white - and in muscles, but there’s always a low level circulating through blood serum. His is gone. Not low, gone. It’s like he got zapped with the world’s biggest magnet.”

“Erm,” says Tony.

“Too bad. He was a nice old coot. Mentored at the local school helping with science projects. He helped my girlfriend’s daughter build a solar cooker, actually.”

“Could we speak with her, your um …” Steve pauses. Clearly, he didn’t yet have the vocabulary to deal with 21st century families.

“Your step-daughter,” Tony offers. “Could we speak with her?”

Dr. Adams takes out a Starkphone - which makes Tony grin even under the fed-exterior - and gives the voice command to call ‘Penelope.’

A girlish voice answers. “Hey, Marge.” She sounds exasperated just from being called. “I’m busy.”

“Penny,” Dr. Adams says. “I have some men here who wanted to ask you about Mr. Knopf.”

“Ma-arge,” comes the answering whine. “I already told you. He just helped me build the Solar-izer 3000. I really didn’t talk with him about his life or whatever.”

“Nice name,” Tony interjects. “What’s it do?”

They spend a few minutes talking science via speaker phone, Penny enthusing over a solar cooker that can double as a pressure cooker, and Tony looking more and more impressed. Steve suspects that the Charlotte Science Fair is about to get a large, anonymous donation.

“So, when you worked with Mr. Knopf, did he ever mention anything about himself - his life, where he was from, that sort of thing,” Tony asks.

“Er,” Penny says. “I don’t know. I know he wasn’t from here. He said he worked in New Mexico, maybe, before he came here. That he taught in Chicago.”

“Mmmm, hmmm,” Tony says. “Anything else?”

“He wanted to go visit his son,” Penny says. “But I guess now …”

“His son?” Steve asks.

“Yeah. His son. I guess he’d be about fifty or sixty now. They got separated during the war, I guess. I don’t know, that’s what he said.”

“Interesting,” Tony says. “Thank you for your help, Penny.”

Dr. Adams takes the phone off speaker, talks with Penny for a moment, hangs up.

“You need anything else?” she says.

“Any idea where Mr. Knopf spent most of his time when he wasn’t helping kids?” Tony asks.

Which is how Steve ends up in an honest-to-god knitting circle in the back of a high-end yarn store.

“Martin sure could knit for an old man,” says one lady. Beatrice, Steve thinks, or Bernadette. Either way, she’s wearing a sweater with cats on it, and what Tony calls Mom-jeans. “He helped out with the neighbors’ dogs and would make them sweaters every year for Christmas.”

Tony mouths the words, “Dog sweaters” at him. Steve doesn’t know what to do with this information, so just puts on his best aw-shucks grin, and keeps going.

“Anyway, nice guy, did a lot in the community, went to church when the weather was nice, kept his yard up,” Beatrice-or-Bernadette says.

“He ever talk about his past?” Tony asks.

“Well, it was clear he wasn’t from here, even if his accent was really faint. I mean, I guess I knew from the name he was German and that he’d come here after the war, but that’s about it.”

“And it never bothered you that he might have been a _Nazi_?” Steve says, voice edging on anger. He doesn’t realize he’s tensing until the pencil he’s holding to take notes snaps in two.

Tony looks disapproving - and that’s saying something, given that Steve has seen Tony only aim his disapproval face at Fury and machines that don’t immediately bend to his will - and says, “Thanks, Bernie, for the info. I’d love to get a couple of skeins of this yarn for my assistant. She’s an avid knitter.”

Steve watches in disbelief as Tony pays cash for two coils of yarn, one with something that looks suspiciously like sparkles in it, and herds him out of the yarn store.

“Really, Cap,” he says, when they’re out of hearing range, in the car. “You can’t go telling Suzy-cat-sweaters that the nice old man probably did things that make the guy from Saw look like a picture of mental health.”

“Saw?” Steve says.

“Never mind,” Tony says. “Can I stop being the voice of reason? It’s itchy. Like this suit.”

They eat dinner at a local chain, get free beers once the waiter realizes they’re ‘those fed guys asking about nice Mr. Knopf.’

Steve mechanically saws through his mediocre steak, watches Tony build towers out of his potatoes in reference to a movie Steve’s never seen.

Tony’s talking about baseball or possibly building a new jet, when Steve puts his fork and knife down, and says, “Is everyone in this town delusional or just really stupid?”

Tony sighs. “The war was less than a year ago for you, Steve. It’s history to these people. It’s history to _me._ My main involvement was getting smacked, occasionally, by a guy everyone agreed was a hero to the war effort.”

“Howard did -”

“Let’s not get into my father’s many failings as a parent. I know he was your friend,” Tony says, and goes about piling more peas onto a mashed-potato sculpture.

“You’re my friend,” Steve says, and it sounds too earnest, even for him, and he takes a deep swallow of water to avoid looking at Tony for a minute. When he looks up, Tony’s eyes have this weird open shine to them, just for a second, and then it’s gone, and Tony is talking about whatever he was before.

Tony has a few more beers - too many, Steve thinks - but doesn’t argue when Steve wrangles the keys away from him, and drives back to the motel.

“Didn’t want to drive that P-O-S anyway,” he mutters, and falls asleep in the passenger seat. He rouses, briefly, when they’re back at the motel, kicks off his shoes when he gets in the room, then does another faceplant onto his bed.

Steve washes up, flosses, settles in. It’s quiet out, quieter than Brooklyn ever was, quieter than the war, certainly, quieter than Stark Tower. It occurs to Steve that this is the first night he’s spent in the country in _this_ country, and lets the sounds of cars rolling past on the highway soothe him to sleep.

He wakes at 3am. The TV is on, if muted, and Tony has out a tablet.

“Sorry,” Tony says, distractedly, and continues with whatever he’s working on.

Steve studies him, in the flicker of the TV light, fingers tapping and drawing shapes over the tablet’s screen in no discernible pattern.

“He’s not going to stop, you know,” Tony says.

“Who -” but Steve knows he means Magneto.

“I’ve identified five scientists who fit the same description as Knopf. Three are already dead, one apparently is in a coma from complications with surgery, and one is living in the Virginia suburbs. My guess is that’s where he’s striking next.”

“So you want us to -”

“I’ve cleared it with Fury already. Christ, that man never sleeps. Looks like you and I are on Nazi-guarding duty.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Steve swims and angsts, sketches and angsts, eats pizza and angsts, and also something about clones.

It’s quiet in the mornings here. New York has a thrum - a _music_ if Steve wants to get poetic about it - that’s absent. But the motel does have a pool, even if it’s leaf-covered and smells vaguely like wet dog.

Steve skims off the leaves with a net, leaves them in a damp, chlorine-y pile, then strips to his shorts and begins doing laps. It’s early October, and the water is cold enough to steal his breath a little, but he runs about a degree hotter than most people, and it warms as his muscles begin moving. The pool isn’t large - it’s about four of his body lengths from end-to-end - but it’s square and not some ridiculous shape like some of the pools Tony owns. If he doesn’t push off too much, it almost makes for a work out.

He varies the laps, a series of pulls, then kicks, then moving by just undulating his body, though the last reminds him uncomfortably of being stuck in ice as it freezes, so he goes back to pulls. He thought he would hate the water, after, but it’s calming, somehow, just the rush of it in his ears, the weightlessness of his body.

It reminds him of swimming in the river as a kid, of his Bucky’s mother smothering him in the biggest towel he could imagine, fussing at him that he’d catch a cold. He always did, whether he swam or not, and he’d rather have come by his various ailments honestly than spend his life avoiding anything that might do him harm.

Tony finds him there, sits by the edge of the pool, coffee steaming in the morning cool, tablet out and incongruous with the concrete and rusting metal furniture of the motel patio.

Steve pulls himself up to the side. His clothes are a good few feet away - he didn’t want to splash them - and his shorts are clinging and partially translucent. Steve can feel his face warm, but if Tony notices, he must attribute it to the chill out here, hands him a towel when Steve gestures for it, two more when the tiny motel towels feel like trying to dry off with a dishrag.

Tony must be anxious about work - or as anxious as he gets anyway - because he doesn’t look up from his tablet until Steve is dried, and has pulled on his sweatshirt and wrapped one of the towels around his waist.

 

They fly out from Michigan to Virginia, land on a private airstrip just south of DC, have a much gaudier car waiting, one Tony makes satisfied little hums while driving, the same noises he makes when he’s eating a cheeseburger.

Northern Virginia is a series of serpentine streets, all seemingly having the same name. Steve’s grateful for the GPS Tony has built into everything he touches, lets the slightly mechanical voice of it, and Tony’s responding admonishments and praise, carry him over the abbreviated hills of the Virginia suburbs.

That stops when they get to the man’s house, and find a smoking crater instead.

Coulson’s there, as is the local PD, the fire department, and several unmarked vans that Steve recognizes as SHIELD vehicles.

The house has been burned to its foundations, and while there’s some smoke damage on the two neighboring houses, it has the look of a targeted strike.

Coulson’s outside, wearing his G-man face and barking orders as the local boys scurry like ants. He scowls as Tony and Steve approach.

“Things just got a bit more serious, gentlemen,” he says. “It seems someone didn’t like our friend, Dr. Hausen, too well. We found his bones practically fused with the foundation. No point in doing an autopsy - it’s pretty clear the explosion killed him.”

Coulson signs some paper that the local cops shove at him, gives Steve and Tony a glare. “Nice guard-job, by the way.”

Dr. Hausen’s neighbors are, of course, reasonably traumatized by the whole proceeding. One, a middle-aged man with the build of an athlete starting to go, comes out of his daze enough to mention a lingering dispute over trimming a tree that spanned both Dr. Haussen’s and his properties.

Steve reassures the man that this isn’t probably isn’t retribution from the municipal government over lawn care, and sends him off with a confused look.

“Haven’t these people heard of super-villains?” Tony asks.

“Apparently not,” Steve says.

Another neighbor comes over, clutching a photo album.

“I don’t know if it will help, but here’s a picture from the last Christmas party. Dr. Hausen - Fred, Fred is in it.”

Coulson takes the album, studies the photo for a second.

“Yes, I would say this would be of interest.” He hands the album to Steve, and then goes off to deal with putting out literal fires.

It’s a group photo, so everyone is crammed together. A few people wear holiday sweaters, a few people have on party hats with tinsel pompoms at the top. Everyone’s smiling.

“Is that -” Tony says, peering over the top of the photo.

“It has to be,” Steve says.

“Oh, fuck,” Tony says.

“Agreed.”

Smiling up from the picture is Dr. Fred Hausen, a short balding man of about 80. And the spitting image of Martin Knopf.

 

“So,” Tony says, later, when they’re back in his DC headquarters, “We have three Germans, three Nazi collaborators, two of whom are clones or twins or something, one of whom has a son no one except a fourteen-year-old girl knows about, and all of whom are dead.”

“Did we ever get a picture of the guy in North Carolina?” Steve asks.

“Yeah, he looked like a dead old guy with all the iron sucked out of his body,” Tony says, but he brings up a county autopsy record on his tablet.

This one - a Dr. Klaus Mueller - was significantly fatter than the other two scientists and favored bushy facial hair. Tony loads the image into some bit of software, press a few keys, compensates for the stretch of weight-gain, trims off the beard.

“He’s the same, isn’t he?” Steve asks, but he already knows the answer. “How could we have missed this?”

“Well, army of murdered German scientist clones isn’t exactly everyone’s go-to for Explanation A,” Tony says. He flops down on the expansive white couch where Steve’s sitting, close enough that Steve has to budge over to give him room, stares out the window.

Tony’s DC condo doesn’t have the same expansive feel as Stark Tower. The view, limited by the building only being ten stories, is of other buildings, most of which are dark, save a few lights from the kind of law offices and lobby firms where it’s normal to sleep under your desk.

Pizza appears, later, and Steve’s happy for something to eat, happy that Tony can occupy himself with humming and tinkering over whatever bit of design he’s perfecting.

Three scientists, all the same: It seems unlikely to be something as simple as triplets - and wouldn’t they have been in touch if they were relatives?

Steve thinks of the facilities he raided, the straps and needles, the screaming, the drains in the floor, the barbarity that humans were capable of - are _still_ capable of perpetuating on one another.

He’s startled when Tony lays a careful hand across his knee.

“Million dollars for your thoughts,” he says, grinning.

Steve rolls his eyes.

“That hasn’t worked since I was 16,” Tony says.

“If I had any faith in humanity, that would have never worked at all,” Steve says.

Tony removes his hand from Steve’s knee to punch him in the arm. “You’re nothing but faith in humanity,” he says, with a laugh, then proceeds to stuff his mouth with pizza before Steve can respond.

 

Steve feels at loose ends the next day. He wanders around the Mall, feet seeming to carry him over the dead grass and gravel. It’s a high clear day, the kind where Washington hides the fact it was built on a swamp. In his plainclothes, and with his shield in its case, he looks like just another tourist-backpacker as he makes his way toward the National Gallery.

They have a pattern, an obvious one, and Tony is running Martin/Klaus/Fred’s picture through every database imaginable to see if there’s another one that they can find and - warn? Protect?

The thought of it churns Steve’s stomach. He’d made a career of punching Hitler in the face. He’d shot more Nazis than he can recount, if he’s honest, can’t remember much about them than the patches on their uniform and the satisfying crunch as their bodies hit the ground.

Magneto - and they’ve been assuming it’s Magneto, but really, what information do they have other than the missing iron? - has been doing what? Murdering old men? Playing clean-up for Hitler’s last science experiment?

He goes to the new wing at the National Gallery, treads carefully, spends time examining the Calder installation. It’s not his thing, really, but it’s neat, and he thinks he remembers Tony mentioning having a couple of pieces, somewhere, in some house that he never visits.

Sketching always clears his head, so he sits on one of the metal benches, the ones with arms every so often to discourage the homeless from sleeping there. He has to sit on the end, wedge himself between the metal jutting out. He has a good vantage on the Calder, his back facing a low-traffic area. Clint would approve.

The Calder changes with the slight air currents; the sun winks out from behind a cloud, hides again, casts shadows and erases them. It’s hard to get perspective on an object in motion; Steve gains a new respect for Calder’s sense of balance and angle, for the way that the sculpture can change so slowly that he barely notices it, until it looks entirely different. He gets charcoal on his fingertips and sleeves, wipes his hands on his pants, leaves smudges.

Tony calls him through their comms, says, “Steve, we got something. Get your ass out of the museum. If you want a Calder, I’ll just give you one of mine.”

Steve resists the impulse to look up, as if Tony’s high in the sky on the satellite he has them all tracked on, shoulders his pack and, after a moment’s hesitation, gives the sketch to a kid he’s seen eyeing him while he’s drawing. He signs it with his real name, hears the kid’s gasp as he realizes what he’s holding, smiles as he steps back into the mid-afternoon sun.

Tony greets him when he gets back to the condo with the kind of grin that indicates he’s had too much coffee and too little sleep.

“I’ve been looking through the blah blah blah classified classifed databases” - he waves a hand dismissively - “and we found them.”

“Them?” Steve asks. “How many more of them are there?”

“Still living? Like, one, and he’s in San Jose, which is probably the worst place on earth, but it’s a _them_. There were _dozens_ of these guys running around for sixty years and no one noticed.”

“Tony,” Steve says, “There were dozens of Nazi clones running around the US for sixty years and _no one_ noticed, except Magneto. That’s hardly a ringing endorsement of our national security.”

“Right, so we can argue the geopolitics of the entire Cold War on the plane ride, but don’t you at least want to know what the fuck these guys were doing here for other than knitting dog sweaters and arguing over yardening?”

“Yeah, OK,” Steve says. “And what do we do when we get there? Protect this guy from being killed like the others? Last I heard, I wasn’t in the business of saving Nazis.”

“He’s an old man. You’d just let him get schwacked like that?” Tony sounds genuinely surprised, horrified even.

“No, I mean,” he begins. “I don’t know what I mean. This is really confusing for me, is what I’m trying to say.”

Before Tony can respond, Fury buzzes in. “Gentlemen, you better get your asses on that plane. Ground control at the SHIELD office in LA just spotted a Magneto-shaped UFO heading for San Jose. It may already be too late.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Steve isn't coping and Magneto wears a ridiculous hat. Mentions of past Steve/Bucky of a sort.

Magneto arrives before they get there, is pulling phone poles out of the ground by their rungs, shooting the metal through windows of a modest brick house.

Steve hears glass shatter.

Tony, fully outfitted, takes off after Magneto, his suit a red and gold blaze.

Steve’s shield may be impervious to magnetism, but his mail is still steel. Magneto could extrude his flesh through his shirt like clay through a sieve, if he so chose.

Steve’s many things - headstrong, sure, but he’s not reckless with civilians - and goes to defend the house.

Magneto has bent the drainpipes, the windows in their frames, perhaps has begun on the beams of the house.

Iron Man shoots blasts at him, aiming to dislodge his ridiculous helmet - he and Loki have a surprisingly similar style.

Magneto assaults the house with various objects, spikes, scraps of the gutters, nails pulled from roofing. Steve blocks them, blocks the windows as best he can, shrapnel pinging off his shield, sparking against the bricks of the house.

It’s the beginning of a nice day, Steve thinks, a little absurdly, though the thin morning light hasn’t quite burned off the cloud cover. It could rain.

They’re throwing phone poles at each other, now, like some kind of strange highland game, Iron Man zooming between them, blasting Magneto before pulling up to a sharp ascent.

Steve can heft a phone pole, had to carry them in basic with the other grunts, hadn’t been able to shoulder his share of the weight, then. He can take that, and more, now.

Magneto isn’t expecting an attack on two fronts, barely dodges the pole Steve throws at him. Wires crackle on the ground; some lie dead like black snakes. Steve has to dance between them, a bit, is expecting it when Magneto yanks him by the shirt, slams him against the house, brick dust streaking his uniform. His bell gets pretty rung, and he’s out for a minute, rouses just enough to see Iron Man send out one final blast, chase Magneto away like an unwelcome dog.

The one thing about fighting in New York City is that civilians were generally grateful. Sure, shop-owners would occasionally get after them for busting windows - Tony’s army of legal eagles generally took care of the damages, save one time Tony tried to help clean up a produce stand and ended up spilling oranges into the street, then tripping over them, inelegantly. The storekeeper had been too busy laughing and snapping pics on her phone to request damage reimbursement.

So Steve’s not expecting the old man to be on the porch, looking at him like he’s the villain, though his look fades to disappointment quickly.

“I wish you hadn’t done that, son,” he says. He’s an old man, in carpet slippers and a ratty plaid robe. He’s still gripping the morning paper, folded over to the crossword.

“Sir?” he says.

“You’d better come in, then. You and your … partner. There is much to discuss.” The man turns, lets Steve follow him off the stoop into a house that smells of bergamot and menthyl-lyptus.

“Tea?” the man says.

Steve shrugs. He secures his shield, doesn’t lower his cowl, for once likes the anonymity of it, the way it masks the skeptical lift of his eyebrows.

The old man makes him tea, lets Steve fidget on his ugly couch while he busies himself in the kitchen, brings tea on a tray.

Outside, Steve can hear Tony righting the phone poles that got knocked over, the blast of his repulsors, the beginning of rain.

The man sets the tea down, picks up a cup in a shaking, liver-spotted hand.

Steve lets his remain on the tray, feels quietly vindictive, rude.

“Son,” the man says.

“Captain’s fine,” Steve says. Somehow being called Cap or Steve by this man puts bile in his mouth.

“Captain,” the man says. “I’m afraid you have come far for nothing.”

“From my perspective, sir,” Steve says, not bothering to hide the disdain in his voice, “We just saved your life.”

“As I said, Captain,” the man says, “you have come a long way for nothing.”

“A man’s life isn’t nothing,” Steve says, automatically.

“Perhaps,” the man says. “It depends on the man. And the life.”

  


It’s not the first whispered fight Tony and he have had in the middle of someone’s living room, but it’s the first with a Nazi clone slurping tea in the next room.

“If he wants us to let him die, then …” Steve hisses.

“We are not letting the last source of intelligence on Nazi human cloning commit suicide by _mutant_ ,” Tony hisses back.

“He has the right to -”

“He has a right to die _after_ he’s questioned.”

“He should have the right to determine the manner of his death.”

“Don’t give me the ‘death-with-dignity’ speech, Cap,” Tony says. “Besides, are you sure it’s not just so you can kill a Nazi without, you know, killing an old man?”

Before Steve can answer, the man, Herman, his name is Herman, calls out.

“I will, as you say, come quietly,” he says. “But I ask for another day. One more, and I will go.”

They spend the day playing cards, listening to NPR. Herman is fond of the old-time music programs, Bing Crosby, Benny Goodman, etc.

“ _This_ is music,” he says, emphatic, to Tony, who nods like he’s not listening, which he isn’t, and Steve, who studies his cards. Two of a kind. Fives. Shitty hand. “They don’t make ‘em like this anymore. I danced with this girl to this song. Pretty girl, prettiest girl, but weren’t they always? Soft red hair, bright red nails, even with the war. Funny how some things aren’t necessities until they are. Had to hide it in my lab, of course, couldn’t play the music above a whisper, but we would dance and dance … “

The music suddenly grates on Steve the way Tony’s music does, sometimes, making him want to go someplace, any place, for some quiet.

He ends up in the bathroom, white knuckling the fixtures until the metal begins to bend, a bit, runs the hot water and washes his hands until his skin starts to object, takes a long, slow look in the mirror, finds he’s having trouble meeting his own gaze.

He doesn’t punch the wall, but it’s a near thing.

Steve agrees to take first watch, watches Tony de-suit, wipe his face down with the towel Herman provided. His hair sticks to his forehead and his goatee looks a little crushed from the helmet. Steve can’t help but find it endearing - even the great Tony Stark gets hat-hair.

Tony watches him watch, and smiles, not his patented ‘I’m better/richer/smarter’ than you grin or his ‘I’m going to fuck you up and like it,’ smirk, but something smaller, Steve thinks, perhaps more genuine.

Tony can get the suit off on his own, but it’s easier with help, especially with one of the boots crushed from where Tony slammed it into the phone pole. Steve kneels down, takes the Leatherman Tony hands him, begins working on the screws. It’s slow going, and Steve can’t help but feel vulnerable, at Tony’s feet, head bent and neck exposed.

The room is dim, the only light a pale table lamp, the flash of headlights of cars going by reflected on the wall. It’s a small room, made smaller by Steve’s size and Tony’s bulk in the suit. The only sound is the light patter of rain, of Tony’s breathing, of his own breath, and the turn of the screw’s threads.

Tony has the gauntlets off, piled on an end table like a pair of discarded gloves, brings his hand to Steve’s shoulder, pats, once, in a gesture probably meant to feel reassuring, but at this angle, with them this close, brings a high flush to Steve’s cheeks.

The Leatherman has become slippery in his hand, palm sweaty, and he has to put it down, has to wipe his hand on his pants, then picks it up again, continues.

Tony draws a breath, like he means to say something. Steve tilts his head up, sees Tony looking over him, eyes soft, mouth parted, slightly.

“I know -” Tony begins.

“Don’t,” Steve says. “Whatever you’re going to say, just, there’s nothing. I can’t -”

His breath hitches, ragged, and he can feel an odd burning behind his eyes. He hasn’t cried since Bucky fell - six months ago, or seventy years, depending on how he’s counting - and he certainly doesn’t mean to in an ex-Nazi scientist’s living room, next to a hideous floral couch.

Tony reaches down, plucks the Leatherman out of his hand, puts it on the carpet.

“I was almost -”

“I can wait a little longer, Steve,” Tony says, and draws Steve to his feet.

Tony hugs like it’s a new thing to him, arms still encased in the suit, unsure where to put his bare hands. He settles for the middle of Steve’s back, something not quite companionable, but still chaste.

Steve lets his chin rest on Tony’s metal shoulder, lets himself smell Tony’s sweat and expensive soap and the faint mechanical scent of the suit.

If Tony feels any sort of wetness on his neck, Steve reasons, he’ll probably attribute to perspiration and the humidity of the coming rain, and nothing more.

Tony finds him four hours later.

“You weren’t going to wake me?” he says. He’s mostly suited up, but has the helmet’s faceplate down. Even so, Steve can hear his mild disapproval.

“You were sleeping,” Steve answers. “Thought I’d, you know, encourage the habit.”

“You should sleep too,” Tony says.

“Super soldier,” Steve says.

“Pepper’ll kill me if she thinks I denied you your beauty sleep.”

“Fine, fine.”

Steve spends a good hour thrashing about on the couch, winces every time the springs squeak under his weight. He’s about to give up and pile the blankets up on the floor, when he hears the thump of Tony’s boots on the stairs.

“Everything OK?” he says, already reaching for his shield.

“Aside from the fact you’re the noisiest non-sleeper ever, he’s fine. Still asleep. I checked his breath with a mirror, made sure he’s not dead, all that.”

“Really?”

Steve can feel the eye roll, even if he doesn’t see it. “No, of course not. He’s fine. He has on a one of those jungle-noise things. It’s oddly soothing.”

“I was just about to sleep on the floor,” Steve says.

“Why don’t you bring the stuff” - Tony gestures to the quilts and pillows - “sleep in the hall?”

“What if someone breaks down the door?”

“Magneto’s not coming back tonight, not with the thumping I gave him, and I can _fly_ you know, so there’s not much tactical advantage to sleeping on the couch. Besides, the jungle noises are nice. I think there’s toucans.”

Steve does sleep easier with Tony nearby, the sound of his breathing, even through the suit. Steve hadn’t slept alone, really, before the ice. It’s hard to feel alone in a tenement, and they slept two or three to a bed in the orphanage. Bucky and he’d slept head-to-foot for a few nights in their first apartment, then gave that up when Steve realized he was getting the raw end of the deal, as his feet didn’t reach Bucky’s face and Bucky’s feet smelled worse than his cooking. After that, they’d just slept side by side, huddling when the weather turned cold. Bucky’d been a handsy drunk, but Steve hadn’t minded, was always cold anyway.

During the war his slept in army camps, in bases, the snores and grunts of soldiers a constant presence. Bucky slept near him then too, at first for warmth when they were out in the field, then later, just for the familiarity of it. He doesn’t know what to call what they had, if there’s some modern vocabulary he’s missing for their friendship that was something more, perhaps.

Steve slept for 70 years, alone, in the ice. He doesn’t particularly want to do that again.

He suspects Tony knows some of this or all of this, when he wakes to find Tony resting a hand lightly on his shoulder, to find that he’s shifted in the night to almost lying on top of Tony’s thigh. If Tony does know something, he doesn’t mention it.


End file.
